KARACHI: Collaborative art is a difficult undertaking. The reason being: creating art, primarily, is a solitary job. It can be so solitary that one often drowns in the swirling whirlpool of solitude. After all, it requires undivided attention and the passion to express the way one, singularly, wants to. It is against this backdrop that an exhibition of artworks made by Hurmat ul Ain and Rabbya Naseer titled Distance Between Us, under way at the Koel Art Gallery, needs to be viewed.

There’s another important reason for looking at the exhibition with utter seriousness: the subject matter that the young girls have chosen to focus on. The two have touched upon the sensitive issue of the distance between people, ideologies and ideas. This is evident from the three lines taken from a famous Robert Frost poem that the viewer cannot miss reading on one of the walls of the gallery –– And on a day we meet to walk the line/ And set the wall between us once again/ We keep the wall between us as we go.

In modern times, that is, the post-truth era, the symbol of the wall has assumed unimaginable significance. There is a constant us-and-them debate that has turned even a fiery Marxist such as Slavoj Zizek into a pessimist scholar. The gap, as it were, seems to be widening uncontrollably. This is what Hurmat and Rabbya are pointing out. The example of our society in this regard is the starkest where sectarian, ethnic and provincial differences are yet to diminish and where obscurantism still holds sway over the hearts and minds of many.

The series ‘In a State of Constant Doubt’ (print on archival photo rag) speaks about that. Doubt, as we know, implies the beginning of the formation of a question, and it is healthy for any society to raise questions; but it also indicates misgiving. This is precisely the gap that the interdisciplinary artists want to plug.

Once we have established the premise of the display, it becomes all the more praiseworthy to acknowledge that Hurmat and Rabbya have worked jointly on the project. It suggests unity of concepts emanating from two apparently unalike souls — positive souls at that.

The exhibition, curated by Naazish Ataullah, concludes on Sept 23.

Published in Dawn, September 17th, 2019